The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's DreamStowe, Harriet Beecher
History
The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Spiritualism; Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem
When this theory is offered in seriousness as a final solution of the
mystery in question, we are tempted to ask, Who is electricity? what
is his mental and moral _status_? and how and where did he get his
education? Or if by "electricity" is here simply meant the subtile,
imponderable, and _impersonal_ fluid commonly known by that name,
then let us ask, Who is at the other end of the wire?--for there must
evidently be a _who_ as well as a _what_ in the case. But when the
advocates of the electrical theory are brought to their strict
definitions, they are compelled to admit that this agent is nothing more
than a medium of the power and intelligence that are manifested. Now
a medium, which signifies simply a _middle_, distinctly implies two
opposite ends or extremes, and as applied in this case, one of those
ends or extremes must be the source, and the other the recipient of the
power or influence that is transmitted through the medium or middle; and
it is an axiom of common sense that no medium can be a perfect medium
which has anything to do with the origination or qualification of that
which is intended simply to flow through it, or which is not absolutely
free from action except as it is acted upon. That there are so-called
mediums which refract, pervert, falsify, or totally obliterate the
characteristics of that which was intended to be transmitted through
them, is not to be denied; but these are by no means perfect or reliable
mediums, either in physical or psychic matters.
If the little instrument in question, therefore, is, through the medium
of electricity or any other agency, brought under perfect control and
then driven to write a communication, the force that drives and the
intelligence that directs it can not be attributed to the medium itself,
but to something behind and beyond it which must embrace _in itself_ all
the active powers and qualifications to produce the effect. Now let us
see where Mr. Headley gets the active powers and qualifications to
produce the phenomena manifested by his Planchette. He shall speak for
himself:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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